A code of conduct is a document which sets out expectations for members of a community, with regard to how they will behave toward each other.

Effective codes of conduct

Important elements of an effective code of conduct include:

  • Specific descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior (sexist jokes, etc.)
  • Reporting instructions with contact information
  • Information about how it may be enforced
  • A clear demarcation between unacceptable behaviour (which may be reported per the reporting instructions and may have severe consequences for the perpetrator) and community guidelines such as general disagreement resolution.

Codes of conduct which lack any one of these items tend not to have the intended effect. See HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community article for more information.

Evaluations of codes of conduct

Communities/projects/etc which have a code of conduct include: (Please list projects in alphabetical order.)

Organization License Descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior? Reporting instructions with contact information? Information about enforcement? Clear demarcation between anti-harassment policy and more general community guidelines
Citizen Code of Conduct CC-BY-SA Yes Yes Yes Yes
Contributor Covenant MIT Yes Yes Yes Yes
Debian MIT/GPL No Some Some
Django CC BY Yes Yes Yes No
Drupal No Yes No No
Fedora No No No
FreeBSD Yes Yes Yes Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there.
Geek Feminism (see also resources for adopting it) (recommended) Public domain Yes Yes Yes Yes (only contains anti-harrassment language)
GNOME No No No (explicitly states code of conduct will not be enforced) No
Go CC BY Yes Yes Yes
Joomla (derived from Ubuntu CoC) No No No
Julia Yes Yes Yes Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there.
KDE Some No Some No
Mozilla CC BY-SA No Some No No
OpenStack Foundation Some No

No

PostgreSQL No No No No
Puppet Community (derived from Ubuntu CoC) Some Sort of Yes
Python No No No
Ruby No No No No
Rust Yes Yes Some Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is all grouped at the end.
Slack CC BY-SA Yes Yes Yes Yes
Sugar Some No No No
TODO Group Open Code of Conduct CC-BY Yes, expanded after this PR Yes Yes Yes - the CoC is a mashup of several previous works, but much of the language is from the recommended GF CoC.
The Tor Project Yes Yes Yes Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there.
TTS (U.S. government) (derived from GF CoC and Recurse Center) (recommended) Yes Yes Yes Yes
TwitterOSS (derived from Python, Ubuntu, and Mozilla) No No No
TYPO3 (derived from Ubuntu CoC) No No No
Ubuntu CC BY-SA No No No No

Related lists of guidelines

Not quite project codes of conduct, but related community statements:

Codes of conduct and policies for your community

See:

Further reading

  • A Reddit thread on Rust's code of conduct: "The exaggerated reframing of these matters in terms of existential struggles for human liberty against tyrannical censors suggests overall bad faith." -- user graydon2
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